The Great City of London, known for its historical landmarks, modern skyscrapers, ancient markets and famous bridges. It’s arguably the financial capital of the world and home to over eleven thousand people.

Wait, what? Eleven… thousand?

That’s right: but the City of London is a different place from London — though London is also known for its historical landmarks, modern skyscrapers, ancient markets, famous bridges and is home to the government, royal family and seven million people.

But, if you look map of London crafted by a careful cartographer that map will have a one-square mile hole near the middle — it’s here where the City of London lives inside of the city named London.

Despite these confusingly close names the two Londons have separate city halls and elect separate mayors, who collect separate taxes to fund separate police who enforce separate laws.

The Mayor of the City of London has a fancy title ‘The Right Honourable the Lord Mayor of London’ to match his fancy outfit. He also gets to ride in a golden carriage and work in a Guildhall while the mayor of London has to wear a suite, ride a bike and work in an office building.

The City of London also has its own flag and its own crest which is awesome and makes London’s lack of either twice as sad.

To top it off the City of London gets to act more like one of the countries in the UK than just an oddly located city — for uniquely the corporation that runs the city of London is older than the United Kingdom by several hundred years.

So how did the UK end up with two Londons, one inside of the other? Because: Romans.

2,000 years ago they came to Great Britain, killed a bunch of druids, and founded a trading post on the River Thames and named it Londonimium. Being Romans they got to work doing what Romans do: enforcing laws, increasing trade, building temples, public baths, roads, bridges and a wall to defend their work.

And it’s this wall which is why the current City of London exists — for though the Romans came and the Romans went and kingdoms rose and kingdoms fell, the wall endured protecting the city within. And The City, governing itself and trading with the world, grew rich.

A thousand years after the Romans (yet still a thousand years ago) when William the Conqueror came to Great Britain to conqueror everything and begin modern british history he found the City of London, with its sturdy walls more challenging to defeat than farmers on open fields.

So he agreed to recognize the rights and privileges City of Londoners were used to in return for the them recognizing him as the new King.

Though after the negotiation, William quickly built towers around the City of London which were just as much about protecting William from the locals within as defending against the Vikings from without.

This started a thousand-year long tradition whereby Monarchs always reconfirmed that ‘yes’ the City of London is a special, unique place best left to its own business, while simultaneously distrusting it.

Many a monarch thought the City of London was too powerful and rich. And one even built a new Capital city nearby, named Westminster, to compete with the City of London and hopefully, suck power and wealth away from it. This was the start of the second London.

As the centuries passed, Westminster grew and merged with nearby towns eventually surrounding the walled-in, and still separate City of London. But, people began to call the whole urban collection ‘London’ and the name became official when Parliament joined towns together under a single municipal government with a mayor.

But, the mayor of London still doesn’t have power over the tiny City of London which has rules and traditions like nowhere else in the country and possibly the world.

For example, the ruling monarch doesn’t just enter the City of London on a whim, but instead asks for permission from the Lord Mayor at a ceremony. While it’s not required by law, the ceremony is, unusual to say the least.

The City of London also has a representative in Parliament, The Remembrancer, whose job it is to protects the City’s special rights.

Because of this, laws passed by Parliament sometimes don’t apply to the City of London: most notably voting reforms, which we’ll discuss next time. But if you’re curious, unlike anywhere else in the UK elections in the City of London involve Medieval Guilds and modern companies.

Finally, the City of London also owns and operates land and buildings far outside its border, making it quite wealthy.

Once you start looking for The City’s Crest you’ll find it in lots of places, but most notably on Tower Bridge which, while being in London is operated by City of London,

These crests everywhere when combined with the City of London’s age and wealth and quazi-independent status make it an irresistible temptation for conspiracy nuts. Add in the oldest Masonic temple and it’s not long before the crazy part of the Internet yelling about secret societies controlling the world via the finance industry from inside the City-state of London. (And don’t forget the reptilian alien Queen who’s really behind it all.)

But conspiracy theories aside, the City of London is not an independent nation like the Vatican is, no matter how much you might read it on the Internet, rather it’s a unique place in the United Kingdom with a long and complicated history.

The wall that began all this 2,000 years ago is now mostly gone — so the border between London and its secret inner city isn’t so obvious. Though, next time you’re in London, if you come across a small dragon on the street, he still guards the entrance to the city in a city in a country in a country.

Notes & Corrections:At 1:56 since the characters are in (what will be) England I should have had them say say ‘recognise’ not ‘recognize’3:49 The Freemason’s Hall is actually a couple streets just outside the border of the City of London.

Last Friday, US Congressman Dennis Kucinich introduced HR 6357, a bill which aims to ‘prohibit the extrajudicial killing of United States citizens’ by the federal government. In other words, in the Land of the Free, they need to pass a law to prevent the government from indiscriminately murdering its own citizens.

Now if this doesn’t give one reason to pause and consider the distortions of liberty that have taken place in western civilization, I don’t know what will. Think about it:

Does a free society send government hit men to eliminate anyone they perceive to be an enemy of the state?

Does a free society have hundreds of police agencies, each with the authority to deprive a man of his life, liberty and property in their sole discretion?

Does a free society have hundreds of thousands of laws, codes, rules, regulations, and policies which effectively criminalize nearly every aspect of one’s existence?

Does a free society lead the world in prison population?

Does a free society hunt down criminals and terrorists by treating its citizens like criminals and terrorists?

Does a free society tell its citizens what foods they are / are not allowed to consume?

Does a free society steal your money at gunpoint to buy bombs that they drop by remote control on brown people in faraway lands?

Does a free society debase its currency and plunder the purchasing power of its citizens?

Does a free society saddle unborn generations with obligations they never signed up to bear?

Does a free society award near total control of the economy, the money supply, and everything tied to it, to a tiny elite few?

Does a free society brainwash its citizens into believing that they live in a free society? (at least the Chinese know they’re not free…)

Ask yourself, are you really living in a free society? Are you free? If not, why not? What else could possibly be more important?

It takes courage to answer honestly. But once you realize the truth and begin to see the system for what it is, it can be a liberating and life-changing experience.

You’ll find that there are places where you can live free in this world. There are ways to preserve your dignity, your privacy, your livelihood. You’ll find that you can build great camaraderie and mutual trust with like-minded souls because you share the same values, not the same color passport.

My guess is that you’re reading this because you’ve already started down the road to freedom. But you might feel alone… intellectually isolated in a sea of automatons.

You’re not alone. More and more people are waking up every day and beginning to realize the incredible fraud that has been perpetrated against them. When enough of them figure it out, this system will be finished.

That’s why I fundamentally believe that today is one of the most exciting times to be alive since the French Revolution. And we’re just getting warmed up.

If you have any friends or loved ones who still exemplify that self-deluded, bombastic serf mentality, I encourage you to pass this along to them… and challenge them to answer honestly.

Whatever happened to the everlasting lightbulb? This is the story of companies that engineer their products to fail.

There once was a time when consumer goods were built to last. Then, in the 1920’s, a group of businessmen realised that the longer their product lasted, the less money they made, thus ‘planned obsolescence’ was born, and manufacturers have been engineering products to fail ever since.

The current throwaway climate – where the latest technology is outdated after a year and electronics are cheaper to replace than to repair – is the basis for economic growth. But infinite consumption is unsustainable with finite resources. With the economy crumbling and consumers becoming increasingly resistant to the practice, has planned obsolescence reached the end of its own life?

Combining investigative research and rare archive footage with analysis by those working on ways to save both the economy and the environment, this documentary charts the creation of ‘engineering to fail’, its rise to prominence and its recent fall from grace.

“What you hear in this video is from the audiobook of “The Iron Web,” a novel I wrote years ago. (The printed book and audiobook are at LarkenRose.com). These are the words of a fictional character in the book, and he says quite a bit more. And yes, the character is rather harsh in his condemnation of state-worship, but for a reason. If you have the story context of who is saying it, where, when, and why, some of it makes more sense. Many thanks to FreiwilligFrei for making this video.” Larken Rose

This video is a US-version of the video “Nachricht an das Stimmvieh”, produced by FreiwilligFrei.de, a german group of bloggers and activists. http://www.freiwilligfrei.info/ focuses on voluntarism and the philosophy of freedom.

The „rulers” actually don’t matter. They are vastly outnumbered by the people like you and me. The problem is those who legitimate the “rulers” with their votes, remaining silent when the “rulers” commit evils in their names.

Most of them do not feel bad about that. Many of them even cheer and applaud to their “rulers” and they defend the crimes they commit.

Larken Rose is looking for answers to this absurd behaviour and blames the concept of authority. From early childhood most people are conditioned to listen to authority when they try to figure out what is right and what is wrong instead of listening to their own hearts, their own conscience and their own moral values.

As adults they see everyone as a „good person” who blindly obeys any random authority. And in their pursuit of becoming such a „good person” they will use every means. In particular they love to oppose violently against those who stand up for true freedom.

Larken Rose sums it up in one sentence:

“The problem is not those in power, the problem is right between your ears.”

” Kevin West’s new film has been specially made to mark the 7th anniversary of the 7th July 2005 London bombings. It includes some of the new footage released by the sham Enquiry into the bombings held in 2010/11 and the subsequent release of more disinformation about what is supposed to have happened that day.

Based on and idea by Tony Farrell, sit back and watch Tony and Nick deal a pack of cards itemising many of the key points overlooked in the discredited and chaotic so-called ‘official story’.

It is a witty, refreshing and sometimes moving reappraisal, giving emphasis to the human cost seldom explored in other films on the subject. The events of 7 7 are delivered with energy by Nick and Tony. Belinda McKenzie also lends a hand to the proceedings — a fighter for truth and justice in the world… ”